City Of Terror
by The Threat
Summary: What if the Entity decides to turn New York City into its new playground?


Disclaimer: not one character used here is mine.

* * *

Looking at his fob watch, he sees that he still has an hour left before his big date. That should be enough for him to make it from the morgue to the police station, he thinks to himself.  
He picks up his briefcase, rises up from behind his desk, and heads out of his office.

Outside his office, he still has a room of cadavers to walk through. Between two such bodies, he sees his assistant, reading through a file folder.  
Smiling to himself, he likes the fact that his assistant is suddenly more interested in these dead people's lives.  
He continues his stride, when suddenly he hears a snort.  
Turning around, he notices a slight change in his assistant's face.  
The snort must have come from him, but he is trying to hide it. Why? What could possibly be so amusing about the file?  
He walks back to his assistant, the latter of whom notices his boss approaching him.  
"Oh, hey Henry... excuse me, Doctor Morgan," the assistant says, while shutting his file. "Don't you have that big date with Jo?"  
Swiftly, the man, Henry, snatches the file out of his assistant's hands.  
"No, don't," the assistant pleads.  
But he is too late. Henry opens the file, and finds a magazine inside, about a man called the Midnight Ranger.  
"Is this a bloody lark?" Henry asks him.  
"I was just bored," the assistant tells him.  
"Bored?" the good doctor rolls his eyes. "Lucas, you're in a building, surrounded by corpses. Each have their own story to tell."  
"And you always manage to tell them in five seconds," the assistant, Lucas, reasons. "So what is left to find out?"  
"So you prefer low-quality entertainment?"  
Lucas scoffs. "It's just harmless fun. What's wrong with that?"  
"They said the same thing about Bendy," Henry mutters under his breath.  
This makes Lucas squint his eyes. "What's a Bendy?"  
Shaking his head, Henry responds. "No matter, that was before your time."  
This makes Lucas laugh. "And when was your time? The Stone Age?"  
Henry decides to ignore the question. "Put your magazine back with your personal belongings, and this folder back with all the others."  
He smacks the file back into Lucas' belly, who needs a few seconds of recovery before replying. "Sure thing, Mike Tyson."  
Henry raises his brow at the sound of the name, but shakes his head, and walks away.

Exiting the cadaver room, Henry makes it to the elevator. He waits for it to arrive at his floor, until the doors open, and he can walk inside.  
Saying his hellos to others inside, he turns to the door, which closes.  
Pressing the right button, the elevator moves.  
His nose twitching, Henry notices an odd scent. He looks up.  
The lights in the elevator shatter, making everyone except him scream.  
An explosion occurs on top of their cabin, and before he realizes it, the ground beneath him starts falling down before he himself does.  
All sorts of fears rush through him. What will this elevator do to his body? What will Jo, or his adoptive son, do when they hear this news? And for that matter...

Darkness. It is not something he has not seen before. But this is still different. He sniffs the air.  
"I... can breath?" Henry asks himself, surprised this is possible.  
He opens his eyes. He sees the sky. A starless sky. But upon a closer look, he realizes there are no clouds either.  
As he ponders on many questions, he tries to get up.  
Rising up from where he is lying down, he notices that the area around him makes even less sense.  
He recognizes the street as Broadway, but there are no cars. In fact, there is a lot of grass growing in the street, implying nobody has been around for years.  
Looking a little further, he spots something else that is odd.  
Each lamppost has no functioning light. How is he able to see?  
Underneath each lamp, there is a hook attached. What can these possibly be for?  
Pushing himself off the ground, he begins running.  
At the end of Broadway, he finds the next street to be just as overgrown. What happened to the city? What happened everyone?  
Looking around, he sees someone in the distance. He cannot make out the man's face, but the overall shape of his clothes and hat, tells him the man in the distance is a policeman.  
"Constable!" he shouts at the man.  
The man turns around, slowly, while twirling his baton.  
"I'm relieved to see you here," Henry says. "Can you tell me what is going on he..."  
His voice stops suddenly. The closer he gets to the man, the better a look he can take at him. The policeman's uniform does not look like anything he has seen in recent years. It looks like the type they wore back in the 1980s. Worse than that, the uniform's name tag says "Cordell".  
Cordell? Why does the that name sound familiar to Henry?  
Before he has any more time to think about it, he hears low scratching. The type of sound you usually hear when someone pulls a sword out of its sheath.  
Looking down, he sees Cordell broke his baton. The beating end of it is in his left hand, while his right hand holds the handle. Strangely enough, the handle had something shiny attached to it.  
Henry's face freezes, as realization hits him. Cordell did not break his baton, he pulled a knife out.  
With swift moves, Cordell slashes his knife toward Henry.  
Having faced with similar people before, Henry knows exactly how to dodge the attacks. Or so he thinks. This man is faster than any he has ever met.  
Using a trick that his close friend, Jo, taught him, he wraps his arm around Cordell's right wrist, turns around, and uses his elbow to punch the policeman in the face.  
This seems to disorientate him a little. Henry uses this to his advantage, as he gives Cordell a hard push, and he falls to the ground.  
With that man down, Henry starts running, without looking back.  
On his way, he finds a way down to the subway. What with the vast network of tunnels, Henry feels certain he should lose Cordell down there.  
He hurries down those stairs.

Down in the subway, he finds the area in shambles. A lot of the tiles are missing, the iron bars that are supposed to keep people without a ticket out, are no longer there, and the ticket booths look more like old cardboard boxes than they do solid booths.  
Just how long was he gone?  
Shaking his head, Henry rushes past the fences, and deeper into the underground structure.  
But the deeper he goes, the stranger it all gets. Each post has a hook attached to them. The same sort of hook he has seen attached to the lampposts outside.  
Why would no one have time to renovate the city, and yet still find time to install these hooks?  
An odd sound catches his attention. He shifts his head, looking for the source.  
Once he found it, he heads in that direction.  
The closer he gets to the source, the more it sounds like a woman's voice. But he cannot make out what it is she is trying to say. She is not screaming for help, nor is she crying.  
"Ha," it sounds. "Hee, yah!"  
It takes him a moment, but he understands now. She is making the sort of sounds a martial artist would make.  
So this woman is fending for herself. But against who? Or what?  
The doctor in him recognizes that someone may need his help. Thus he quickens his pace.

Henry finally arrives at the source. He looks at what is happening before him.  
His jaw drops, as his mind is unable to take in what is happening.  
There is a man in a green suit, bowl-cut hair, dark sunglasses,with four metallic arms attached to his back. He is fighting an Asian woman, with long black hair, wearing primarily yellow clothes, and wearing an odd sort of wrist device.  
The woman, he cannot place, but he is sure he has seen the man before. He was a well-known criminal, who was active in the 1960s. Supposedly, because of an incident at a nuclear power plant, those metallic arms became fused into his body. But the same radioactivity that caused such a melt, also gave the man cancer. He should not be alive today. So what is he doing in New York of 2019?  
As he is pondering this, he can see the man has used two of his metallic hands to grab hold of the woman's wrists. With a third such arm, he punches her stomach, hurtling her across the space, until she hits a post.  
Henry's initial instinct is to start running toward her, until he sees that there would be no point.  
As the woman hit the post, something punched its way from her back through her chest.  
Almost screaming at the sight, Henry collapses to the floor.  
Being a mortician, he has seen many bodies. Working with the N.Y.P.D., he has been witness to many things. But nothing like this. He wanted to know what these hooks on the posts were for, and witnessing how one such hook penetrated the woman, he knows now. It looks like the whole city is adjusted, such that people like this Octopus man can kill others.  
But why? And by whom?  
A low rumbling reminds him of where he is.  
Turning his head back to the woman, he sees a circle of light appear underneath her.  
What happens next, happens too fast for Henry to fully process, he cannot believe it even as he tells it to himself.  
It looked like a hand came out of the circle, grabbed hold of the woman, and pulled her down.  
Henry shakes his head. Nothing he has seen tonight has made any logical sense. And coming from Henry Morgan himself, that is saying a lot.  
In the corner of his eye, he can see that the Octopus man is turning his head.  
He is aware that he has been watched, Henry realizes.  
In a fit of desperation, he jumps from the platform, and onto the railroad tracks. Without looking back, he runs away.  
Putting as much distance as possible between himself and the Octopus man, Henry keeps running.

He eventually reaches what looks like several intersections.  
A quick look around, and he finds himself a ladder.  
Running toward it, Henry sees that it goes up.  
Finally, a way out of this underground, Henry thinks to himself.  
Hesitating no longer, he places his feet on the ladder, and climbs up.  
Reaching the top, he encounters a sewer lid. When trying to open them from the top, they seem heavy, but from below, they should be easier to lift.  
He does so, and shoves the lid to his left.  
Lifting his head up, until it reaches just above the surface, he looks around.  
He is in a small alley. One he does not immediately recognize.  
As he is trying to remember the name, he hears some heavy thuds.  
Curious to know what those are about, he turns his head.  
Stomping toward him, is a big man in leather clothes. He is shaven bald, has a scar on his throat, as if someone tried to slid his throat once, and is carrying a huge sword. Said sword, the man raises, telling everything Henry needs to know.  
Sliding back down from the ladder, Henry reaches the underground, and continues his run.  
Not stopping until he reaches the nearest station, Henry is naturally exhausted once he does stop.  
What is happening around here, he asks himself. First he sees Cordell, who (if memory serves) officially died in prison in 1985, but was found alive again in 1988, only to be killed shortly after. Next, he meets with a man who should have died of cancer years ago. And now, he meets the infamous headhunter, whose headless corpse was found in 1985. And to make matters worse, is what he witnessed happening to that Asian woman.  
Asian? A thought suddenly strikes him. Has something like this not happened before?  
Footsteps are approaching him.  
Looking up, Henry can see a trench coated man walking toward him.  
Henry takes in a breath to talk, but stops himself.  
A closer look at the trench coat, and Henry frowns again.  
What fabric is it made of? It does not look like cotton, or leather, or even the fabrics that his own coat is made of. In fact, it looks hardened, like a shield. If anything, the coat seems more reminiscent of an insect's exoskeleton than it does anything else.  
Looking at the man's face, Henry's fear is confirmed. It is not a man he is looking at. This thing, whatever it is, is wearing a mask, making it look like a man. But through the mask's eyes, he cannot see human eyes look back.  
Ignoring his pained lungs, Henry turns toward the flight of stairs behind him, and starts running.  
Fear grips him, both literally and figuratively, as he feels something grabbing hold of his ankle, stopping his foot, but letting the rest of his body fall on the stairs.  
Working on instinct, his hands are looking for something to hold on to.  
The best he can find, is the stairs' handlebars. But they are too high for him to reach.  
All sense of reason escapes him. He can no longer remember if he took his equipment with him or not. If he had, he would take out a scalpel, and use it to defend himself. But even if he had, where on his body would he keep it? He cannot remember.  
To his surprise, a pair of feet appear in front of him. These feet are wearing flat shoes (the sort he has seen several young women wear in recent years), under a pair of jeans.  
"Eat this!" he hears a young woman shout, followed by the sound of a flame bursting.  
A loud screech echoes, and the grip on his ankle loosens.  
Needed a few seconds of recovery, Henry turns around.  
Whatever it was that had him, it has already left.  
"What was that thing?"  
Hearing the young woman's voice, Henry raises his head.  
He sees his rescuer. She looks to be in her twenties, long dark hair, a blue shirt, black cardigan, and pink purse. In her hands, she is holding a lighter, and a can of deodorant.  
"Thank you," he tells her as he gets up.  
"British?" the woman is surprised at his accent.  
"Yes," Henry replies. "I'm Doctor Henry Morgan."  
He sticks out his hand to introduce himself.  
The woman puts her lighter back in her purse to shake his hand. "Jessica Locke."  
As he shakes her hand, he can see she drew something there.  
Four stripes, all crossed by a fifth one.  
"A tally count?" Henry questions. "What are you counting?"  
Jessica frowns. "You were just attacked by a giant bug, and you're wondering about my tally count?"  
"Believe me," Henry reasons with her, "after everything else I've seen tonight, even a giant gorilla wouldn't surprise me."  
She nods. "I can see that. Even before I got here, I was harassed by this tall man, who could somehow make me forget I ever even saw him."  
Though the story sounds fantastical, there is only one thing that Henry wants to know. "And do you know, by any stroke of luck, where "here" is?"  
She shakes her head. "One moment, this is a mining town. Next it's a butchery. Then it's a hospital. This is the first time it's a big city like New York."  
"And what happens in these... other places?" Henry wonders.  
"Each time, it's the same thing," Jessica explains. "There's an electric fence surrounding us, there are hooks everywhere..."  
"Wait," Henry interrupts. "Us? There are others?"  
She nods. "And I never meet the same people twice. Everyone I meet is either someone who's met some kind of monster, or walked into a place where there once was a monster."  
Henry stifles a laugh. "Working with the New York Police Department, I have encountered many monsters. So I suppose I fit the profile of... whoever is doing this."  
"Or WHAT ever is doing this," Jessica suggests, as she reaches into her purse.  
She takes out a book, and hands it to Henry, who takes it.  
On the front cover, a name is handwritten. Benedict Baker.  
"Who is this Baker person?"  
"No clue," Jessica shrugs. "I only made it through ten pages before I gave up. All he does, is talk about some kind of entity, but he never explains what this entity is."  
"Maybe I should take a gander," Henry suggests. "Do you know a quiet place where I can read?"  
Jessica sighs. "I wish I did. I went to the library, I meet with some kind of green potato ghost. I enter what looks like an old storage place, and there I'm attacked by a man that buzzes like a fly."  
That last bit sounds familiar to Henry. He has spent some time in France, years ago, where he met an old man named Delambre, who, while on his deathbed, confessed that his younger brother, had once conducted an experiment that turned him into a human and fly hybrid. Could that be what this young woman just described?  
"Everywhere we go, there is some kind of monster waiting for us," Jessica summarizes. "There is no "quiet place to read," Henry."  
In a city like New York, where all sorts of horrors have taken place, Henry shouldn't think so. Even his own house was once a crime scene. If what Jessica is saying is true, he might meet the man who created the scene in the first place again.  
"Maybe we should try and keep moving instead," Henry suggests. "Do you have a car around here?"  
"No," Jessica said. "But I think I saw a train moving earlier. Maybe if we wait at one of the stations, it will arrive and let us board."  
"Quite a "maybe" you've presented me with."  
Jessica scoffs. "And that's quite the vocab on you. What are you? Like a hundred years old?"  
"If I told you, you wouldn't believe me," Henry answers, and continues to talk before she can ask her next question. "Where did you see this train?"  
"Follow me," she says, and heads up the stairs.  
Judging from this response, Henry deduces she is not a New York native. If she was, she would have told him the name of the street, or alley, or wherever it is she saw it.

While following her lead, Henry looks inside Benedict Baker's journal.  
The final entry is entitled "New York". While it is hard to read into grave detail while walking, he can tell it mentions the appearance of a man in a yellow raincoat and with an ax. To Henry, it sounds like the villain in one of these dumb action films that his assistant Lucas watches.  
Realizing he cannot read too much into this final entry, he looks at earlier ones.  
There is one that is entitled "InGen Headquarters", another that reads "Amsterdam Schooner", "Camp Crystal Lake", "Arctic Base", "Amberson Hall", and many others.  
"There it is!" Jessica exclaims, pointing up.  
Looking where she's pointing, Henry can see a train.  
"Come on, Henry," Jessica grabs his arm, and pulls him along.  
Having arrived at the train, Henry is surprised to see it is still standing there, despite the fact that the platform is abandoned. Did it wait for them?  
"Something is not right," Henry says.  
"Come on," she insists. "With everything else that's been going on, can't you just be happy that luck is in our favor for once?"  
"Luck? Preposterous," Henry scoffs.  
"Well I'm going in," she says. "With or without you."  
Henry tries to cry out words of protest, but she is already running toward the train.  
The doctor in him taking command again, he realizes that he cannot leave her alone. So he follows her.  
Barely have either of them entered the train, or its doors shut, and it starts driving.

Looking out the window, Henry sees the city. Or rather, he sees it as anyone would a slideshow, when someone leaves only a second between slides.  
One street he sees, is empty. The next, something happens. At one point, it's a man that looks to be covered in blades, as if he were a walking shredding machine. The next, there is a man in a purple costume, whose mask seems to shoot some sort of ray, that blows everything in front of him away. There seems to be no end to these monstrous men.  
"What are these people?" Jessica asks. "How can all these people exist in our world without us knowing about it?"  
Henry shrugs. "Perhaps, because people choose not to know about it."  
"How can you say that?" Jessica says, appalled at the accusation.  
"Just like nobody knows about the incident in Tokyo from last year." Henry replies. And to make his point clear, Henry lifts up Baker's journal. "Just like you chose not to read into this."  
Since she has no comeback at that, Henry sits down, and opens it.  
The first few pages confirmed what Jessica told him before. That indeed, some thing takes people who enter areas where certain monsters have caused terror, and brings them into this arena, for a want of better terms.  
The rest of the journal, either describes the arena, or the monsters in them. It describes a human lab-rat, stalking its victims in the London underground. There is mention of a scrapheap, where three malformed men chase after you. Even a tree house, where a little girl, with long hair, and a wolf-like face, tears you apart.  
One entry, which is entitled "The Cabin Giant", describes a large humanoid. One that is lying dead, surrounded by the remains of a cabin. Its exact dimensions are not described, but judging from the shaky handwriting, it is clear that Baker was too frightened to fully explain what this thing looked like. What he could muster up to write, is written so hurriedly, Henry can only just make out "something out of Alhazred's books."  
The entry goes on to say that these woods have shown several signs of multiple monsters having grazed the area.  
"Could it be," Baker's entry reads, "that this body is the Entity, when it still had a physical body?"  
"Doctor Henry!?"  
Hearing her call to him, Henry could not help but notice a slight tension in her voice.  
"What's wrong?"  
She does not answer. Instead, she lifts her finger to point at something. That something, is behind the window. The one that separates this train's wagon from the next.  
Getting up from his seat, Henry moves in closer to see.  
His eyes, never blinking from that moment, he can see what has her spooked. The floor of the next wagon is covered in blood, while the handlebars are replaced with butcher hooks, all of which are caked with blood.  
Now, Henry understands why the train waited for them. This wasn't a stroke of luck. This train is another monster's trap.  
Looking in the window's reflection, Henry can see a tall muscular man, wearing a business suit, under a plastic coat, sneering at both him and Jessica.


End file.
